Well my girlfriend finally recovered enough from her back surgery to allow us to go see this movie, so my thoughts are probably things that has been discussed ad nauseam by now, but I will share them anyway.
The editing of this movie was awkward. Each scene was very short, and didn't flow correctly into the next scene. It felt either like a cheap movie, or a movie that got chopped up.
Also, the visuals looked very much like 35mm (lots of grain) - checked, and indeed movie was shot on film. That would be great for the retro aspect, except the movie was cut in such a modern way (quick cuts, moving cameras, etc..) that all the visual nostalgia was destroyed for me.
I HATED what they did with Carrie Fisher's role. They were obviously reusing dialogue, and it came off as if she was saying random shit. It was AWFUL and I am absolutely shocked that people liked it. This was also a matter of me knowing too much - it might not have bothered me as much if I didn't know how they got that "performance".
The CG of young Luke and Leia looked very... CG.
The visuals of the whole movie just felt uninspiring. I feel like we saw better in the prequels.
The story - I don't usually complain about storytelling decisions by movie writers because it's their story not mine. Having said that I would offer some tweaks -
Chewbacca staying dead would have offered a far more interesting emotional arc for Ray. Also, the way it was filmed makes it seems like a script rewrite resurrected him.
C3Po's memory wipe was a scene for the trailers. It should have been one of the most emotional moments of the movie, but then Poe mentioned the R2 backups and... moment ruined. JJ said he was taking some risks with the movie, so take a risk and actually kill someone popular instead of just teasing it.
The final battle sucked. All the fights sucked.
Finn wanted to tell Rey that he loved her, but decided not to and then never did at all because she loved Kylo? Well that would have worked if one of them died, but they both made it and now they have a whole life ahead of them. Will he keep it to himself forever?
Just like in TLJ, Finn decided on a foolish suicide mission. In TLJ Rose stopped him. In ROS she didn't bother... I took it as JJ not agreeing with Johnson about the futility of the "noble sacrifice".
Overall, I think the movie could have been improved with a longer cut that would fix the insane pacing. It probably would have been more coherent had Carrie Fisher's life not been tragically cut short, and I realize that this was fully out of their control. Would it have been tasteless to edit TLJ to have her die when spaced? I am on the fence. We would have lost the scene with Chewbacca dropping to his knees which was the best emotional cue in ROS too. And if you're going with retro designs, I would have preferred a more retro style of filming. No fast cuts and mobile cameras.
If just the technical stuff was improved, the movie would be a 7/10 for me, but as it stands it's a 6. As for the story itself, I think it would be harder to fix with small tweaks than TPM was, but if that's the story the writers wanted to tell us, they have every right.
